Today i'm going to show you how to calibrate your monitor for more
consistent results in photography and videography
last week i released a video and on my new monitor which is this one in the background
it looked just fine i uploaded it did everything i normally did and left it to it when i came to kind
of answering the comments and actually watching the video the next morning i kind of looked at it
and thought it looked a bit dark now if anyone had asked i'd have probably said that it was
my creative choice but in reality i hadn't calibrated my monitor properly after buying it
this meant that the brightness had been too high on the monitor giving me the impression
that the video looked good as it was with your monitor or laptop screen when you do have the
brightness at 100 sometimes it can look just fine but then you look at your scopes or your histogram
the histogram is bunched to one side or the scopes are squashed down to the bottom
and this is a massive indicator that your shot is actually underexposed and also your monitor isn't
calibrated properly i was also producing some images for a friend and he commented saying that
they were really dark after the first round of editing again this was because i hadn't calibrated
my monitor and more importantly i hadn't been keeping an eye on my histograms so from this
i've learnt a few things firstly i've gotten a little bit sloppy when checking my histograms
and my scopes instead i'm relying on what they look like on the screen which is never a good
thing we have histograms in lightroom and scopes in premiere pro for a good reason this is to give
us a graphical representation of the true look to that image the second thing i learned is that
i need to break out the monitor calibrator a lot more to get my screen calibrated especially when
i'm getting a new monitor and this is a good tip if you do buy a new monitor and you've spent quite
a lot of money on that monitor it's worth getting a calibrator to calibrate it so the colors and the
brightness are set according to your room so i'm going to go through the process of
calibrating my monitor today walking you through each step to see if it makes any difference
and if this video is looking a bit brighter that probably answers the question already so the
calibrator that i've got is the spyder x pro it's not the spider x elite but i've got the pro and
this one should do a good enough job so in the box you have this little card it's got a website on it
so i'm going to go to that one now and download the software so you need the software on your
computer to make this work so i've got the website up here the website's pretty good it kind of shows
you step by step what to do with the calibrator so i'll go down here quick start says about
warming up your monitor to start with the colors aren't quite what they should be and i found this
years ago when i had two monitors one of them would flicker and i'd have to give it some time
for the colors to warm up basically and for the monitor to get to the point where it's
quite stable so i'll grab the software i got the spyder x pro and i'm using mac os and then all
you do is just go through the process blah blah blah agree and it'll just ask you a few questions
and i've just okayed them all like anyone i tend not to read any of the legal information
it's probably not the best thing to do but i just click through it because i want to use this actual
product data color applications spyder x pro spyder x pro i'm guessing we click on that so
on the website it did say to plug this in before starting the software i've started the software
but it does actually put something up to say plug in the spider x pro or whichever one you've got
because i've got a mac they're all usbc so obviously i need an adapter so after that
point it asks for a serial number so you plug it in and i think the serial number is in the box
which is at the bottom of the box so type in your serial number and then on the next page
fill in your name and email once that activation is successful and you've activated and licensed
your calibration tool basically what you need to do is just note down the license code i
don't know why you need a serial number and a license code but it's just the way they do it
so i don't know so then i'm just gonna make sure i'm on the latest firmware
version of this software and then i can start doing it so again you've got the wizard here
so it'll run through the process so the one really good thing with spider-x is it
just it's simple you just go through it step by step and it tells you exactly what to do
and when to do it first thing this wizard will guide you through the calibration process
yep warmed up lighting conditions have you checked there's no intense light is falling directly onto
your display screen so this thing you've got to make sure there's no bright light shining
directly onto the screen because i think when this calibrator is sat on the screen
that light could bounce off and in giving you an inaccurate kind of reading
so yep no lighting display controls have you reset your monitor settings
so the next thing is got a reset contrast so we'll find that restore factory settings yes
oh really how is that custom color temperature so this is one of the things when you buy a slightly
cheaper monitor the settings won't be in the standards that we're used to as photographers
so the color temperature we're used to having in kelvin but on this monitor doesn't have it
on kelvin it just has standard warm cool or custom i was thinking the custom might be in kelvin but
it's not it's set at 50 and you either increase that number i'm getting to 100 to make it one way
or down to zero to make it the other way so that's a bit annoying but anyway i'll put it
on standard so i'm hoping that is kind of 6500 maybe the next step is to adjust the
brightness of your monitor to the level at which you are comfortable with okay done all that then
spider connection plugging the spider into compute usb port not into a hub or keyboard
that's annoying again so we can't plug it into a hub
and we have to plug it into the computer right i'll get an adapter
another reason why i hate max so annoying so we're plugged in hopefully
it's going to work now i do like this check menu because you do just go through it and you work
out what you've done and what you've yet to do so we've got all that and then we click on next
choose the type of display you are calibrating a desktop or a laptop so this screen here is to do
with the actual screen and not the computer system so if you're just calibrating your
laptop screen click on laptop if you've got a monitor plugged into a laptop you click desktop
next you'll have a drop down list of manufacturers so find yours in the list
mine isn't there so i'll have to type it in manually then click ok and then click next
with this next step you'll just have to tell it what controls you have
i have brightness but not kelvin presets and then it's just on to the next step
so then it's just figuring out what monitor i have and what settings are in that monitor
so now it's asking me for wide led please select backlight wide led so i found out from the xiaomi
website that it does say it has a wide color gamut although it does say srgb so it's not that wide
in this menu the first time you calibrate it you'll have to do a full calibration but when
it comes to doing it again this is where you can recalibrate or check the calibration so i'll do
a full calibration next so what the calibrator is going to do now is measure the ambient light
of the room and it needs to do this because if you've got a different ambient light in the room
or if you change the ambient light it's amazing how different your screen will look to your eyes
so actually try this test put your monitor on as you normally would and then say have the curtains
open behind your monitor or wherever they are and turn the lights on have a look at your monitor
and then get rid of all of the ambient light and look at your monitor again
if you do them side by side like that you'll notice that when you don't have any other light
the monitor will look a lot brighter obviously because that's the only light source the irises
in your eyes will open up a little bit because there's less light about now i'll probably do
this again afterwards and i'll set it so i have more normal light so i'll probably do it with the
lights on i wouldn't do it normally with a video light but i need to show you guys what i'm doing
so anyway accept recommended settings next
so now i've got to hang this over the monitor
so one of the sides of the calibrator acts as a counterweight that you hang behind the monitor
and you make sure this is set in the middle
and pretty much lined up with the image or logo that they have then click on the next button
so what it'll do now is flash a load of different colors it's kind of reading what's going on so the
calibrator is working together with a bit of software and they're communicating with each other
to kind of work out the optimal settings adjust the brightness control until the indicator is in
the middle one thing i hate about these monitors is the buttons on the back it's uh so annoying uh
brightness
up to dark
yep that's about right and continue
now it looks like it's going through a set of luminosity differences so brightness differences
in the different colors so it's working on red now it's on green i'm guessing the next one will be
blue there you go and then the last one looks like it's going from black to white maybe working out
again it's just working on luminosity and this is one of the problems i had with my video last week
luminosity on the screen so basically the brightness on the screen was way up and
so what looked good on the screen didn't actually look good when i published it so
on a lot of other screens it was a lot darker so that hopefully will fix that problem so it's all
done now and finish remove that so then it'll ask if you want to name and save your profile
i'm just keeping it as the name of the monitor so i can remember which one it is so i've saved that
and then click next next this next screen just gives you a few different images so you can see
what changes have been made to the color contrast and brightness so to me that looks like it's
just changed the white balance a bit and it's dropped the brightness a bit as well
it's a subtle change but it does make a bit of difference so again what that's telling me is it
was probably used error and it was probably me editing badly i should have probably i
should have looked at my scopes really when i was editing that video last week anyway next
so this monitor seems to have a bigger color space than srgb and not quite as big as adobe rgb
so there you go anyway that's done so i'll quit on a mac once you've created that profile when you go
into your systems preferences and display and then color it will come up in that list of different
profiles so i've got it there i just made sure it's selected even though it kind of automatically
set that one so now hopefully i'll be able to get more accurate colors and the luminosity won't be
too high so i won't under expose any of my photos in any of my videos now i'm not sponsored by data
color i bought this spider-x pro with my own money and that's probably why i went for the
cheaper one the spider-x elite is a fair bit more expensive and both of these are quite expensive
but i think they're well worth it now if you don't have a calibrator or you can't afford one
if you're a photographer the best bet is to edit your photos keeping a close eye on your histograms
and then get it printed out then hold the printer next to the screen and see how it looks compared
to the screen if it looks very different change the settings of the monitor until you get it close
to how it's printed out then try printing out a few different photos once you've edited them
with the new settings on the screen and go through the same process a few times if you do this enough
times you should get your monitor a little bit closer to the calibration of your printer
and this is what calibration really does with photography it's how close it is from your screen
to how it's printed from a calibrated printer so you're balancing those two out so the differences
aren't too wide so like i've already mentioned when i sent those images across to my friend he
saw them and they looked really dark so my monitor had the brightness setting way up whereas his was
probably at a better level and this was a really good learning for me now if you're a videographer
try exporting the video and then viewing it on different monitors tvs smartphones or anything
like that where you can kind of get an idea of what it looked like on different devices
then you just want to dial in the settings so your monitor looks the same as it does on all of those
other screens obviously there'll be differences between screens but you kind of got to work out
the average if your monitor is much brighter then you need to drop that brightness down if your
monitor is a lot dimmer then you need to boost that brightness up and the same with the colors
if the colors say too yellow so it's too warm they needed to bring it towards the sort of blue
end of the scale and vice versa so it's a case of playing around with those settings in your monitor
until you get it close now another resource out there is a website that you can go to
and i've linked it in the description that has a few different graphical images to help you get
the best out of your monitor but it doesn't quite do as good a job as a calibration unit
so the best way is to use a calibration tool like the spider x pro or the spider x elite now there
are different companies that also make units like this so they all pretty much do a good job i've
just used the spyder x pros because i've used the spyder 4 i think it is in the spyder 2 before that
so i've been using them for a long time so i know they do give consistent results and that's what it
comes down to really getting consistent colors and consistent brightness on your screen so whether
you're printing or whether you're exporting a video you know that you'll have confidence in
those colors and that brightness now i do have to admit i bought a relatively cheap monitor
and i do regret doing that i should have spent more money on it as it's the one thing i'm looking
at for most of the day from editing my photos to editing the videos to running my business so if
you're thinking of buying a new monitor spend as much as you can afford and go for one of the more
reputable brands this one will suit me for now but i'll probably go for a second higher quality
monitor for color grading when i buy my new computer in the new year and also get a calibrator
i'm finding now it's calibrated that i'm getting much more accurate colors and the brightness is
about where it needs to be with both photos and videos now do you use a monitor if so let me
know in the comments below it'll be great to hear your thoughts it'll be great to hear how many of
you do calibrate your monitors and how many of you don't and if you want to learn more click on this
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you